Websites and small business

[ekm]

Hi all,

Not sure if this would be better placed in the internet section, but as it's more on the business side rather than the technical how to I'll try here, can always have a moderator move it if required.

As well as being employed, I run a side business working with cars (performance tuning etc) and I have a little rented unit which I use for this business as well as my own personal use (somewhere nice to go that isn't home!). At the moment, I don't really advertise much and mostly go by word of mouth though I do have a basic wix website, whilst I am very tech savvy, web design is one aspect of tech that really doesn't endear to me - I love doing the whole server setup but the actual design work I really don't dig so it is a very basic affair, I get the occasional email enquiry through it, but very rarely do they convert to leads and most business is word of mouth.

I would like to boost this a bit, and I notice wix is going to charge me quite a sum for renewal, and considering I already have a hosting provider with a few spare databases I am considering throwing together a basic wordpress site (nothing fancy) to maintain a web presence, I've also been concerned at the lack of responses to enquiries - I'm not sure if my responses get through or are being caught by spam filters because of the low conversion rate.

My question I suppose is this - for those of us running local service businesses, how much benefit do you think your website has had on the business? I'm trying to judge how essential it is, or it's potential because whilst I'd never not have a site, if it really is something that would benefit I might try and throw a larger effort at it.

The same goes for social media, I have a presence, but I wonder if I am missing out on a lot of potential business because I'm not really a social media sort of person.

It's probably a really broad how long is a peice of string question, but because I'm off my main work at the moment for other reasons, I'm wondering if I should use my time to review my own business, look at some failing points in the marketing point of view and see if I can boost things a bit.

 

[Shopclicks]

With both websites and social media, it really is a case of all or nothing. Your Wix website won't be driving much traffic and if you're posting once a week on social media, you're wasting your time. You get out of both what you put in. Neither are essential for every business but from what you describe, you would probably benefit from time spent on both, unless you can rely on word of mouth and reputation.

In your position, I'd go for the Wordpress website and get a review here when you're up and running. You need to decide which social media channels to use but you'll get more attention if you're posting at least once or twice a day and posting interesting content (preferably videos).

You can also use your Google Business Profile to get more enquiries by optimising it.

 

[Mark T Jones]

Don't get yourself hung up on other random businesses and their use of websites/social media - focus instead on creating your own marketing strategy and deciding what role a website & social media might (or might not)play

Start by considering

- who is your ideal target customer (consider specialising in a specific brand)

- where do they hang out / consume information?

- why will they choose you over other tuning centres?

Incidentally, I'm no expert, but I suspect that performance tuning attracts a lot of dreamers, many of whom have yet to pass a driving test, so a high level of specious enquiries is kind of inevitable

My personal - unrelated experience:

Conversion rate on leads from my professional network = 85%

Conversion rate on website enquiries < 5%

 

[UKSBD]

I look after a performance tuning/ecu remapping site.

It's not really a one or the other (website or social) that works well, it's a combination of both.

He has a simple 7 or 8 page site (plus some local area pages), facebook page, Google Business and instagram page, then has all interlinked together and makes 1/2 a dozen or so posts a month on Facebook, using graphics/little videos and mentions the website in every post.

I keep trying to get him to add posts to the website too, but he says he's always busy enough that he doesn't need to.

 

[ekm]

Thanks for the responses, really helpful and definitely some food for thought.

I do agree, on the social media front particularly that activity tends to breed activity - i.e engagement even just a post about what you're doing tends to fuel enquiries. The problem is, I don't often have a lot to talk about - that said, I appreciate this probably has some power to it, so whilst I raised this thread to discuss websites, I would be interested in thoughts in this area as it might be something to tap.

I don't think the tuning site needs to be anything over-swish, just a reasonable looking few page presence with the usual google maps, contact us details/form etc. I think social media is probably more where the customer engagement/wins are, so I will probably set up a wordpress instance later on and see what I can come up with, be a modified template jobber nothing too fancy I don't have the design skills or patience

It's actually worth thinking about my target customers because the customers are actually one of the biggest turn offs of this work, and probably the source biggest drain of enthusiasm/energy (the technical stuff I can handle) - whilst it's vehicle tuning, it#s also highly technical and less spanner under the bonnet and more reverse-engineering of embedded systems - we can go as deep into the system as modifying operating systems at assembly coding level so it has as much do with IT as it does cars - and the gear we use is expensive as these often have to literally exploit flaws in the ecu to give us the data/software to work with - I generally charge a few hundred pounds per car to do, and this is as low as we can reasonably go really as a car will take a few hours to do, but a lot of our customers tend to be non-technical types and who think we just click a few buttons to make the magic happen. As a result we DO get a lot of dreamers/timewasters, not necessarily those without driving licenses but definitely without an appreciation of the skills/equipment/costs - because I can only do this evenings/weekends we ended up doing a deposit system as someone not turning up because they haven't budgeted or found someone in the back of a van who would do a hatchet job for £50 using cloned tools (yes they exist) would ruin my entire day as I only book a car a day due to never knowing how long a job will take.

I am, going to admit, that whilst I'm good at tuning, I'm probably not good at business (I hate money and discussion of it even if I've worked for it lol) - so I wanted to sort of push this thread to see what I can do better and see if I can utilise the website/socal media, save some money and earn a bit more at the same time

 

[wayzgoose]

I would personally not bother with the website in your circumstances. Would hit the social media with plenty of pictures of what you get up to along with your customers and their cars.

 

[Mark T Jones]

I sense that there is a strong risk here of becoming a magnet for nutters & dreamers!

My knee jerk thought is that a promoted website will generate LOTS of crap. A simple brochure with pretty pics may help.

AS a start point become a person of interest of tuning-specific sites.

Don't over-promote yourself, but engage with advice and information whilst making it clear that you are selective n the work/customers you take on.

 

[UKSBD]

I do agree, on the social media front particularly that activity tends to breed activity - i.e engagement even just a post about what you're doing tends to fuel enquiries. The problem is, I don't often have a lot to talk about

The guy I buit the site for doesn't really say a lot too, he basically just posts 3 or 4 images or graphics that he had made. It doesn't come across as too spammy then

 

[UKSBD]

I would personally not bother with the website in your circumstances. Would hit the social media with plenty of pictures of what you get up to along with your customers and their cars.

The website just ties things together nicely.

The OP already has hosting set up, obviously knows what he is doing, so could probably throw up an acceptable site in next to no time.

It's always useful to have a site to link your Google Business Profile page and other social media pages too.

 

[ekm]

Thanks everyone for the thoughts, all of it is appreciated and being taken into consideration,.

I will have a mull over it this evening, lots to take in - with a proper brew of course (alert, I'm a Yorkshire man) , but I think from reading it, the general consensus matches with my own in that it's worth having a web presence, but for this sort of business it's not something you'd throw a lot of resource at - just some nice pictures, a reasonable frontage, perhaps the right keywords perhaps a feed from my facebook if I can find a plugin for it so I can keep both up to date mutually, and a reasonable means to contact and that will probably do.

The social media I will probably come back to, because i could potentially unlock some business here, because I have noted that when I do post updates *such as we've had had this car in today we did zzyyxx with it and gained 112233 power with it etc' it does tend to generate enquiries and i'd say these social media enquiries do better for winning work than emails.

To be honest I don't actively advertise my business, but someone I've quoted for today told me I was charging less than half of what their alternative quote was, sometimes I'm told im too expensive, so I think the issue here is about targeting the right people and pricing things right (something I'm not good at). The people who want remaps the most tend to be boy racers with not a lot to spend, but those who shall we say want a bit more overtaking power actually seem quite happy to spend but are fewer and far between.

I can't compete with some of the bigger tuning houses in terms of having a six figure dyno cell or glass walled office, but we can do the core work so it would be interesting to see if I can develop this because at the moment I feel somewhat motivated.

 

[ekm]

Bit of a resurrection I'm afraid,

so I've taken the feedback on board, I've built a very small website with wordpress, honestly nothing special I've got the core design done (i'm good with computers but I find web design tedious so it's taking me a while on a when I'm in the mood basis) and I've been adding some content - nothing snazzy, website homepage, about us, a portfolio of work, social media links and a contact us form. It's slowly taking shape now.

I will, once it's a bit nearer completion post a link up (it's just in demo form on a subfolder on a host so it's accessible but not *live*) for a bit of dragons den feedback, but from a both business and technical perspective - how much time or attention as a micro business should I give to SEO assuming I am a layman and I'm going to guess you can go to town as SEO being a field in its own right...

I appreciate that's a bit of a how long is a piece of string question, but I think it's worth asking because some very valid points have been raised about the value of websites today versus, for instance, social media.

 

[DerekGM6]

Bit of a resurrection I'm afraid,

so I've taken the feedback on board, I've built a very small website with wordpress, honestly nothing special I've got the core design done (i'm good with computers but I find web design tedious so it's taking me a while on a when I'm in the mood basis) and I've been adding some content - nothing snazzy, website homepage, about us, a portfolio of work, social media links and a contact us form. It's slowly taking shape now.

I will, once it's a bit nearer completion post a link up (it's just in demo form on a subfolder on a host so it's accessible but not *live*) for a bit of dragons den feedback, but from a both business and technical perspective - how much time or attention as a micro business should I give to SEO assuming I am a layman and I'm going to guess you can go to town as SEO being a field in its own right...

I appreciate that's a bit of a how long is a piece of string question, but I think it's worth asking because some very valid points have been raised about the value of websites today versus, for instance, social media.

I'm not an expert on websites or social media but I sell used car parts over the internet, mainly using eBay. I don't like to put all my eggs in one basket so created our own shop website with Ecwid. I have pushed it endlessly on Facebook, flyers with every order, etc etc but the traffic is minimal and orders even less so, even though I emphasise that everything is cheaper when bought on our own shop. I am well aware that there are ways of getting shop exposure and footfall (mousefall?) that I am probably not utilising, but in the end it comes down to discoverability. Everyone knows eBay, Amazon and the other big online marketplaces. They naturally gravitate there even though they might be aware of our shop. I can never hope to get the same exposure that I get with eBay, Facebook and so on. Something else that plays a big part is that websites are so easily forgotten. I buy nearly everything online now: I discover an online shop selling the widgets that I want, but six months later when I want to reorder I cannot for the life of me remember the name. I now keep a spreadsheet with these details so I can refer back. But with physical high street shops, that problem does not arise so much. We can all remember where we bought our last pair of shoes because we have an image of the shop in our memories and we know where it is on the street. Internet "shops" just cannot replicate that without a huge amount of effort and imagery in the design to imprint it in our memories.

 

[ekm]

Just thought I would bump this

I took on the advice and made a simple website, I wont psot the URL as per the rules but it's basic but does the job. I also pushed social media a bit harder (mostly facebook) and asked people to leave us honest reviews on google.

Result is business has picked up - it's been busy enough actually and last year was a bit of a breakthrough with some genuinely busy moments.

The bad news is I am being bullied out of my current main job, and may need to tide myself over a bit should the worst happen, I found out several local businesses offering the same service as me (but more generic rather than bespoke, as in they re-sell the remaps rather than do custom dyno affairs) are really busy. This indicates I could actually de-stress myself if I could just develop this side business properly.

Like most small businesses, I am good at what I do hence running a business, but not necessarily good at running/promoting the business, but I have noticed the more activity I post on social media the busier I get - which means there's a near momentum effect or 'sales intertia'.

Just wondering, since a lot of people still say they haven't heard of us etc, or didn't realise 'we were just around the corner' if anyone has any tips or guidance for making a marketing strategy in general for a small local car service provider.

I created this thread originally about websites, but to be honest I'm open about anything that a local business marketing strategy could include - social media, business directories (though I am sceptical), improving the website some more, reviews - if there are any paid marketing what do peoples experience suggest works best? (i.e would google advertising likely be worth it?)

Veyr vague questions but I've a few days to mull things over and come up with a bit of a plan for 2025

 

[UKSBD]

Where are you based or what area do you provide the service to?

The guy I do it with only wants to concentrate in a very localised area (within 20 mile radius)

As long as you are not within the same area we could maybe help each other?

DM me if you don't want to say what your website or location is in the forum

 

[pavp]

Juggling work vs keeping up with social media, is a bit of a nightmare but a schedule can help. Dedicate 1-2 hours of time each week to line up posts.

They could be easy to capture eg: behind-the-scenes pics or short videos, and schedule them so you’re not glued to your phone every day.

For reaching more local folks, a tiny Google Ads budget can go pretty far if you limit it to your area, and the same goes for boosting a popular Facebook post - target the keywords that you think that you customers would search for to find your services. Just keep it super targeted so you don’t waste cash on people miles away.

With the website, fresh photos and a quick snippet of what you’ve been working on can make it look alive, and asking happy customers for honest Google reviews is priceless - you can run email or whatsapp marketing campaigns to do this effectively.

I’d say don’t go too hard for a week then vanish—bit of consistency does wonders, even if it’s just a post or two a week to remind people you’re still around.

 

[tomyderigo]

Just thought I would bump this

I took on the advice and made a simple website, I wont psot the URL as per the rules but it's basic but does the job. I also pushed social media a bit harder (mostly facebook) and asked people to leave us honest reviews on google.

Result is business has picked up - it's been busy enough actually and last year was a bit of a breakthrough with some genuinely busy moments.

The bad news is I am being bullied out of my current main job, and may need to tide myself over a bit should the worst happen, I found out several local businesses offering the same service as me (but more generic rather than bespoke, as in they re-sell the remaps rather than do custom dyno affairs) are really busy. This indicates I could actually de-stress myself if I could just develop this side business properly.

Like most small businesses, I am good at what I do hence running a business, but not necessarily good at running/promoting the business, but I have noticed the more activity I post on social media the busier I get - which means there's a near momentum effect or 'sales intertia'.

Just wondering, since a lot of people still say they haven't heard of us etc, or didn't realise 'we were just around the corner' if anyone has any tips or guidance for making a marketing strategy in general for a small local car service provider.

I created this thread originally about websites, but to be honest I'm open about anything that a local business marketing strategy could include - social media, business directories (though I am sceptical), improving the website some more, reviews - if there are any paid marketing what do peoples experience suggest works best? (i.e would google advertising likely be worth it?)

Veyr vague questions but I've a few days to mull things over and come up with a bit of a plan for 2025

My impressions in short are:

• There’s definitely a market in your area for your services.
• Your technical skills and delivery place you above most of your competition.
• What you charge for your services under-sells your value.
• You could benefit from someone asking the right questions and pointing you toward practical tools and knowledge to help grow your business.

A few tips and further thoughts:

1. SEO
You’re absolutely right when you say, “it’s a discipline on its own.” That said, in your case, achieving a page-one or top ranking can be simpler and faster than you might think. Chances are, your local competition has taken the same approach to their websites as you—basic pages with some images or videos but no blog articles, minimal optimization, and very few internal/external links.

If that’s true, you’re in a strong position to dominate local searches with keywords, and it wouldn’t take much effort to achieve this. However, a key point often overlooked with SEO is that ranking isn’t a one-time job. To maintain your position, you’ll need to invest regularly, update existing blog content, and keep optimizing over time.

2. Social Media (SM)
Creating content is easier than ever, thanks to amazing AI-powered tools that can help with recording, generating, auto-cutting, editing, and publishing. Plus, most SM platforms allow you to target your local audience and niche interests.

The real challenge these days, though, is visibility. The sheer volume of content makes organic growth on SM incredibly difficult. To succeed, you’ll need to decide where to invest in:

• Advertising,
• Strategy and creativity,
• Production,
• Or a combination of two or all three.

Social media is MUCH harder and more expensive than SEO, but the assets you create—videos, posts, etc.—can have long-term value and will keep driving business.

3. Traditional Media (TM)
This depends heavily on your specific category. Understanding your real target audience is crucial here—more so than on Social Media. Your target audience (TA) cannot simply be the “dreamers” you mentioned. Instead, focus on what’s common among your paying customers.

If you’re unsure of their common traits (maybe because you’re from a different generation), consider reaching out to past clients. A casual phone call or coffee chat can go a long way in helping you understand where they search, hear, or see information about tuning. Beyond word-of-mouth, ask what sources they trust and find authentic when it comes to cars. You might discover that traditional media isn’t the best fit, and your audience relies entirely on word-of-mouth or social media (e.g., middle-aged customers may lean on WoM, while Gen Y/Z favor SM).

I probably created more questions in your mind than answers, but that’s a good thing!

 

[ekm]

It is a good thing.

So, firstly, apologies for a delayed response - this is not conducive to good business but I'm neurodiverse and having some 'main employment' issues as a result of it - as a result i can be very cyclic with my energy levels particularly with regards to social interaction and I've had my mind elsewhere so apologies for not getting back to this thread as fast as I could have - some days I can go 110% somedays 10% is an effort, I really have to strike when the irons hot really.

Excuses aside /) - all the responses above have given me a lot to think about, it's been by PM but UKBD has kindly given some words of advice (a reply is coming) but you have given me lots to think about.

One thing that seems to be in common with all your responses is that we seem to be pointing in the right direction in terms of utilising social media, and creating content - I'd like to do this - if I can - and you are right in that consistency seems to be the best way to make this have meaningful impact. This is probably my falling point because whilst I do make some good images and posts and spend some time in photoshop demonstrating our services and they look allright, it is a very much 'when I've got the energy to' situation so I'm probably the cause of my own problems here.

I do think, I can offer something a lot of competitors can't - and this is going to sound really wishy washy, but it's simply the fact we give a damn - it's best if you understand the business when i say this, but a lot of vehicle tuners are not technical people, they are - forgive me if this sounds negative - but a lot of coal face 'competitors' are resellers who have bought tools that enable them to buy generic solutions in from other tuners at a price and they upload them to peoples cars, so whilst there's a lot of good ones there's also a situaiton here where what is actually going on peoples cars often isn't actually that known by the people doing it, there isn't a lot of actual customisation in a bespoke way when it comes to peoples cars and often I am told there are no test driving/dyno testing etc or verification that each car is responding in the right way - I have this all baked into my own little process (for example we have a coffee chat with the customer to find out what they want, we do an initial test run on the road or dyno to check the cars state and power output and check its fit for tuning, then we reverse engineer the mapping on a one-off basis and we keep going until the dynos giving us figures and datalogs we like. As a result the process is hours long rather than the '30 minute appointment' that some people get without even as much as a test drive. I get calls often, and I've had one today where we've effectively been brought in to re-remap a car that has had issues as a result of a generic mapping where the company has effectively shrugged the matter off when it's not been what the customer wants or they've had issues afterwards. I'm not saying all tuners are like this, but when people do come to us a constant bit of feedback is 'wow you actually spend time with us'. And I wouldn't have it any other way, I want to enjoy my time doing tuning as much as I want to earn a living.

That said, there is the risk of being undercut, however that said our prices are actually quite reasonable and when I did a market survey about a year ago, we were roughly in the middle of the range I could establish with regards to full bespoke tuners.

So yeah, I want to understand how other companies are busier than us, considering we offer an equivalent or potentially more caring/bespoke service, I am about as equipped as people doing this full time so it's a shame to have assets and not be put them to good use.

I will have a mull over of things, some ideas I've had has been assigning a small budget to joining some make/model specific enthusiast forums and doing some sponsorship/banner advertising there (though I do beleive forums and online communities might have had their day), same with google - I already do facebook marketing to a limited degree but i might try and do some informationals and review the actual ads we put up.

Lots to think about, I might not be the best businessman (I'm not, even without the health issues) but I do have faith in what we offer, and it seems a waste it never seems to run to potential.